Sep 26, 2025
Transcript
[RADIOLAB INTRO]
MATT KIELTY: Okay.
ANNIE MCEWEN: Okay?
MATT: Okay.
LULU MILLER: This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller. I'm here with valiant producers Matt Kielty and Annie McEwen.
MATT: Hello.
ANNIE: Hello.
LULU: Hi. All right.
ANNIE: Okay.
LULU: Why are we here? What are we doing?
MATT: Okay, so today what we're doing is this.
ANNIE: This thing right here.
MATT: That's right.
LULU: This?
MATT: Here.
LULU: What?
JOHN COLAPINTO: Well ...
[opera singing]
JOHN COLAPINTO: This thing right under our noses where our mouths are, that emits this signal that is layered like lasagna, that is carrying information that is making us judge people's wealth and income and education level. But it's also conveying all this emotional information: hostility, love, lust, anger, jealousy. All these physical operations, this respiratory, articulatory feat of symphonic, timed movements that we use to make the air vibrate in interesting ways.
MATT: [whispers It's the voice, Lulu. That's what we're doing.
LULU: The voice!
ANNIE: La voix.
MATT: That's right.
LULU: That is a thing we use a fair amount here in the audio arts.
ANNIE: Sure.
MATT: And so I'm just gonna stick with the layer of lasagna analogy, but today we are bringing you three different layers of this thing, this important thing, the voice. One ...
ANNIE: Where it comes from.
MATT: Two ...
ANNIE: The power it holds over you.
MATT: And three ...
ANNIE: The power it can give you.
MATT: So where it comes from ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: I should put these on.
MATT: This is actually a story that came to us from this guy.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Oh, that's turned down. Let's see. Let me turn the headphones up.
MATT: John.
ANNIE: Wait, wait, wait. You need to introduce yourself.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Oh, yeah. My name is John Colapinto. I was a longtime contributing editor at Rolling Stone, longtime staff writer at the New Yorker.
ANNIE: And a few years back, John wrote this book about the voice.
JOHN COLAPINTO: I did. It's called, This Is the Voice.
ANNIE: Great book.
JOHN COLAPINTO: What a title, too. Isn't that grabby?
ANNIE: Which kind of sent us off on this whole episode, because in it is this really gripping chapter about ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: The very, very beginning.
ANNIE: The very, very beginning of voice.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Which emerges first with a particular species of fish. And you say, "Fish? You gotta be kidding." But no, I'm not.
MATT: You gotta be kidding me.
ANNIE: You gotta be kidding, John.
JOHN COLAPINTO: You gotta be kidding.
ANNIE: Get out of here.
JOHN COLAPINTO: So ...
ANNIE: You're pulling our leg, John.
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... about 400 million years ago ...
ANNIE: Before there were humans, before there were mammals, before there were dinosaurs ...
MATT: It was the age of ...
ANNIE: Fishes.
JOHN COLAPINTO: The age of fishes.
ANNIE: Who named that? Darwin's four-year-old?
MATT: There were a lot of fish.
JOHN COLAPINTO: A lot of different species. And the particular one was living in sort of swampy areas.
MATT: These areas where there wasn't a lot of water.
ANNIE: It was pretty shallow.
JOHN COLAPINTO: And they found themselves, these poor fish, in periods of drought.
MATT: Suddenly ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Completely landlocked.
MATT: ... doomed.
JOHN COLAPINTO: They only can breathe underwater. They don't have a means for extracting oxygen from the air.
ANNIE: And so these fish ...
MATT: They would flop.
ANNIE: They would gasp.
JOHN COLAPINTO: They would die.
MATT: I'm just picturing a sea of fish, like [choking sound].
JOHN COLAPINTO: Yes. It's horrible to witness them suffocate to death, which is literally what's happening to them. But—and as Darwin pointed out, you know, all species evolve from random genetic mutations. I mean, it's so hard to wrap your mind around the randomness of it all, but that's the way it was. So you've got a fish ...
ANNIE: Who one day ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... has a random mutation ...
ANNIE: That creates this little pouch in its throat. So what happens is the next time there's a drought, this fish can open its mouth ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Suck in the air ...
ANNIE: And that air goes down its throat, into this hole, into this pouch ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: That would literally permit oxygen to pass through it into the bloodstream of the fish and keep it alive.
ANNIE: Wow!
JOHN COLAPINTO: Yeah.
MATT: It's what we've come to think of as the first lung.
LULU: Why don't you give a little, [singing] "Ahh. The universe's first lung."
MATT: Well, because it seems like you have a fish that mostly prefers to be in the water, right?
JOHN COLAPINTO: A hundred percent.
MATT: But now it has this hole in its throat that leads to a sac.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Yep.
MATT: It's like, hole—hole good. Bad—bad hole.
JOHN COLAPINTO: [laughs] You've got it. You have got it.
MATT: Thank you.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Because when this poor creature goes back into the water, it's now in danger of drowning.
MATT: Right, because, like, if the pouch fills with water, you're dead.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Exactly. So that hole—it's really like a slit, a valve—that it can open and close.
ANNIE: Like a little tiny mouth.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Yeah, like a little mouth. And it opens to pull the oxygen in.
MATT: And then closes to keep the water out.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Exactly.
MATT: Okay.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Now that's critically important. And again, the thing that just made me go, "Oh, I gotta write this book," was that slit, that valve, that became our vocal cords. And our vocal cords remain a valve. I mean, I never knew this because we call them "vocal cords." We think of them as being like strings, like on a violin, or piano strings that are struck and vibrate to create sound. That's not how we make our voices. That's not how we produce sound with our voices.
MATT: John explained that literally all that a voice is ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: When I go, "Ah ..."
MATT: ... is you are closing that valve and you are pushing the air in your lungs ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Up through this closed valve.
MATT: The valve starts to vibrate and you get, "Mah!" Et voilà—a voice.
LULU: Huh! So wait, okay, if we're pushing air through a valve to talk, and this fish, hundreds of millions of years ago had a maybe similar valve ...
MATT: Mm-hmm.
LULU: ... does that mean it had a voice?
MATT: Well, that's the thing, Lulu.
ANNIE: It did.
LULU: [gasps]
MATT: Yeah. Even though that exact fish has long since been extinct, we can give you an approximation of what it sounded like.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Which is the following—pbpbpbpbpbpb
LULU: Oh.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
LULU: [laughs] Shockingly underwhelming.
MATT: Yeah.
JOHN COLAPINTO: It's hard to do. Pbpbpbpbpb. It's a [putt-putt] sound.
ANNIE: Kind of like a horse?
JOHN COLAPINTO: I'm not doing it. Well, yes, it's like a horse.
ANNIE: [Motorboat sound]
JOHN COLAPINTO: There—Annie's doing it so well, there.
ANNIE: Thank you!
MATT: Oh. What about me?
ANNIE: No, Matt.
JOHN COLAPINTO: So that—I'm sure you did it well too. I was listening to Annie. So it would make various sounds that sound like air being driven through a tight aperture.
ANNIE: Oh, weird!
JOHN COLAPINTO: Which also happens in another part of the human body.
MATT: I was gonna say, it sounds like we're talking farts here, John.
JOHN COLAPINTO: I'm talking about a fart sound. That's exactly what I'm talking about, because that's exactly what our—our anus is. It's also a sphincter, because that valve that I mentioned, it's actually a sphincter muscle. So the first sounds heard on Earth were very fart-like. I mean ...
ANNIE: Yes!
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... bottom line.
ANNIE: That's great!
JOHN COLAPINTO: No pun intended.
LULU: Can't escape it with you two.
MATT: That's right. All farts, all the time.
ANNIE: Yeah. Anyway, Lulu it's not gonna be farts forever, unfortunately, because that fish, it crawls out of the water.
MATT: Evolution kept going.
ANNIE: It kept ticking along.
MATT: And over time this fish, its fins ...
ANNIE: Pop, pop, pop, pop.
MATT: ... evolved into little feet, little limbs.
JOHN COLAPINTO: And suddenly you've got a mobile creature with four legs ...
MATT: Living on land.
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... scurrying around.
MATT: And because it's now on land, breathing air, its lung starts to evolve. And that one lung becomes two, two paired lungs. So more air.
ANNIE: And then the lungs are surrounded by this new thing called a ribcage, which can expand and contract the lungs.
JOHN COLAPINTO: They can suddenly squeeze the air out of their lungs through that valve.
MATT: And so by the time you get to reptiles like ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Lizards.
ANNIE: Or ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Crocodiles.
MATT: Alligators.
ANNIE: They are able to make not just farts but also squeaks.
MATT: And squawks.
ANNIE: And hisses.
MATT: And rumbles.
ANNIE: The voice is becoming more controlled.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Refined. But ...
MATT: John points out most of these animals are actually quite quiet.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Incredibly quiet.
MATT: Like, reptiles just don't make that much noise.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Oh, and it's believed that dinosaurs, which are huge overgrown reptiles, were also pretty silent.
MATT: What?
JOHN COLAPINTO: So those—those Spielberg movies, where you've got Tyrannosaurus rex ...
MATT: Yeah, roaring.
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... doing these amazing roars ...
MATT: Incredible.
JOHN COLAPINTO: ... it's believed now that they were actually kind of wusses.
MATT: [laughs]
JOHN COLAPINTO: I mean they were really not ...
MATT: Imagine the movie if it's just like T-rex just being like, "Ooh!" And then devouring people.
ANNIE: But John says that's the thing. Like, if you're only using your ribcage to make sounds ...
MATT: There's only so much air that you're, like, pushing out.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Exactly.
ANNIE: So what you have back then is just this relative silence.
MATT: It's a quiet world.
ANNIE: But that all changes.
[explosion]
MATT: When a huge asteroid hits the Earth.
ANNIE: Almost everything dies.
MATT: But crawling up from underground, were the earliest mammals.
JOHN COLAPINTO: They were tiny. They were like little mice.
MATT: Some of which had spent most of their lives ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Climbing up trees.
MATT: ... running from dinosaurs ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Burning up oxygen at an incredible rate.
ANNIE: And so they had evolved this really powerful muscle called the diaphragm.
LULU: Hmm!
ANNIE: That sits below the lungs, that allowed them to take in air and push it out.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Rapidly and powerfully.
ANNIE: This would kind of change everything.
MATT: Because even though you had these tiny little itty-bitty mammals that had their tiny squeaks, over time, as they evolved into bigger mammals with bigger lungs and bigger more powerful diaphragms, you'd get ...
[animal roar]
MATT: ... bigger sounds, more air.
ANNIE: And John says at the same time that valve, that slit in the throat ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: All of a sudden, it's being refined.
ANNIE: Little bits of cartilage appear on it, and so do these folds.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Which now enable, through a complex, like, twisting and moving back and forth of those cartilages, you can stretch the vocal folds to create a higher-pitched sound. You can loosen and slacken it for lower sounds. You can actually tense it for growling sounds. You can sort of make the vocal cords stiff for this popping air through the vocal folds.
ANNIE: John says all of this means the voice is becoming more and more of a tool ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: For those things that drive evolution.
MATT: Like asserting dominance.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Fighting off rivals.
MATT: Showing affection.
JOHN COLAPINTO: Wooing mates.
MATT: The voice starts communicating basic emotions.
ANNIE: And the other thing that mammals ...
MATT: The way that their young feed is on ...
ANNIE: Mammary glands.
MATT: A breast.
JOHN COLAPINTO: That's new with mammals. So the action of affixing lips to a nipple, and then coaxing milk from that nipple with very specific rhythmic lip movements, but then also coordinating the tongue to sort of get out of the way, to the let the milk come in, but then rippling the tongue in complex ways, in order to make the milk pass down into our stomach is an amazing system of muscles in the mammalian face and throat and tongue.
MATT: And so if you're an animal with a big, complex brain, John says you can start doing things like ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: Hitting the tongue against the back of the teeth for "ta" and "da." Popping the lips for "pa," or holding them closed for "mmm."
MATT: Or you can start making ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: "Ha, he, hid."
MATT: ... vowel sounds.
JOHN COLAPINTO: "Huh." It's literally the posture and shape of the tongue.
MATT: It's over 400 million years ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: From diaphragm to lungs ...
MATT: To that valve ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: That open and closable slit ...
MATT: With all its little folds ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: To facial muscles and so on.
MATT: This whole system from your gut to the tip of your tongue ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: That we would eventually recruit for the act that I'm now performing ...
MATT: These symphonic time movements ...
JOHN COLAPINTO: To speak.
MATT: And that's what I love: 400 million years of evolution to all of these parts of the body that eventually allow you to escape your own body. You can project yourself out into the world. You can convey thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions. And all of it is distinct to you, to your physical body. Like, your voice is you.
ANNIE: Yeah, your sonic fingerprint.
MATT: Yeah, like a sort of face.
ANNIE: A face shooting out of your mouth—pew! Little rosy cheeks flying in the wind.
MATT: Whee!
ANNIE: [laughs] Whee!
MATT: From a fish all the way to this.
DANIEL ABRAMS: The voice is just—it's everywhere. Like, we hear it from the second we wake up, if you live with anyone. And even if you don't, you know, there are—everything's talking to us. And we just get so acclimated and adjusted to kind of a constant onslaught of voices in our life.
ANNIE: That you can sort of forget that they're meaningful.
DANIEL ABRAMS: And why they're important.
MATT: Okay, when we come back, this voice that you just heard is going to take us on a little journey to a very important voice that you probably have some feelings about. In just a minute.
LULU: Radiolab. Lulu.
ANNIE: Matt.
MATT: Annie.
ANNIE: Okay, back from break.
MATT: Took a little break.
ANNIE: Took a break. Now we're back.
MATT: And we're continuing on with ...
ANNIE: Moving on.
MATT: ... voice. And number two, the power it holds over you.
ANNIE: Yeah.
MATT: Which we'll start with this guy ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Daniel Abrams, clinical associate professor here at Stanford University.
ANNIE: Where he studies the brain.
LULU: Yeah. Okay.
ANNIE: But he kind of has, like, a weird career trajectory.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yes. Out of college I was what's called an acoustical engineer.
ANNIE: One of those people that, like, when you build a building ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Sit around and stare at drawings of buildings and, you know, the HVAC components of the buildings.
ANNIE: You basically do some math to make sure that the air conditioning is not, like, just too loud in parts of the building.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yeah.
ANNIE: And that wasn't enough for you?
DANIEL ABRAMS: [laughs] I know. It sounds like super-sexy work.
ANNIE: Something about it didn't click for him.
DANIEL ABRAMS: I realized I wasn't cut out to be an engineer.
ANNIE: But he did, like, spend a lot of time thinking about sound.
DANIEL ABRAMS: And not just kind of any old sound, but the sounds that are—that are really important to us as human beings. And in particular, how does the brain make sense of the sounds that our ears detect?
MATT: Sounds such as ...
ANNIE: A voice.
MATT: And in particular one special voice.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Mom's voice.
MATT: Mother's voice.
ANNIE: Okay, that sounds icky.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Well, it's certainly a loaded term, right?
MATT: But Daniel was basically like, a mother's voice is one of the first voices that you hear in your life.
DANIEL ABRAMS: And studies have shown that children are actually able to recognize their mother's voice before they're even born.
MATT: So, like, in the womb, right around 18 weeks, ears poke out of the side of the head of a fetus. And researchers have done studies showing that when the fetus hears the voice of the person who's carrying it, its heart rate will start going way faster.
DANIEL ABRAMS: And it's kind of inferred that ...
MATT: The fetus can recognize what we're calling mother's voice ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: From other voices.
MATT: Huh.
DANIEL ABRAMS: And ...
ANNIE: What is the beating ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Sorry, go ahead.
ANNIE: I'm sorry. I just—well, why—why would a heart beat faster?
DANIEL ABRAMS: You know, I mean, I guess it's ...
MATT: Anxiety.
ANNIE: Yeah. Truly anxiety.
ANNIE: The truth is that no one really knows, because it's a fetus.
MATT: But it was clear to Daniel that this mother's voice was powerful.
ANNIE: And so what Daniel wanted to know is okay, what is this powerful voice actually doing in, say, the brain of a kid?
MATT: So at this point, Daniel's at Stanford, and basically what he and his team do is they get these kids ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Kids at a range of ages between ...
MATT: Seven and twelve.
ANNIE: And then they had the mothers of these children come in ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: For a voice recording.
ANNIE: And Daniel would hand them a piece of paper with some words on it ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, mother: Oh my God. Wait, what am I saying?]
ANNIE: ... and tell them to read the words as if their child comes up to them at a museum ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: And says, "Mom ..."
[ARCHIVE CLIP, child: What's that weird thingy over there?]
DANIEL ABRAMS: And you would say ...
ANNIE: Should I say the whole—should I say that?
MATT: Yeah, I think just—yeah, the whole phrase.
ANNIE: Okay.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Jimmy—whatever your child's name is …
ANNIE: "Oh, that's a ..."
DANIEL ABRAMS: "Keebudishawlt."
MATT: Keebudishawlt?
ANNIE: Keebudishawlt.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
ANNIE: There are these nonsense words ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: From "ka."
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
DANIEL ABRAMS: To "pa."
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Peebudishawlt.]
DANIEL ABRAMS: To "ta."
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Teebudishawlt.]
DANIEL ABRAMS: There we go. Good.
ANNIE: Because they didn't want it to be something like, "airplane."
DANIEL ABRAMS: Because we would be measuring more than the voice. We would be measuring some association with an airplane in this case, possibly a negative one. And maybe in other kids, they love airplanes. And so ...
ANNIE: They had these words that truly meant nothing.
MATT: And then they had these other moms come in ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Who did not have kids in the group.
MATT: But they were mothers.
DANIEL ABRAMS: They were mothers, though.
ANNIE: Oh!
MATT: Oh!
MATT: They had this sort of ...
ANNIE: Mom ...
MATT: ... je ne sais quoi of mom.
ANNIE: Yeah.
LULU: Yeah? Like, mom vibe.
MATT: Yeah, mom vibes.
LULU: Okay.
MATT: So they had them record the words as well. And then Daniel and his team would bring in a kid, have them lie on their back inside of an fMRI machine. And then they would play them ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
MATT: ... the voice of someone who is not their mom, and then take a picture of their brain. Play them another voice ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, control voice: Keebudishawlt.]
MATT: ... of not-mom. Take a picture. Then ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (cat meow)]
MATT: Whoa!
DANIEL ABRAMS: Threw a couple of kitty cat meows in there to make sure that they were awake and attending the sounds.
ANNIE: [laughs]
ANNIE: And then they just keep going through this.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
MATT: Not mom.
ANNIE: Picture.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
MATT: Not mom.
ANNIE: Picture.
MATT: And then ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Keebudishawlt.]
MATT: Mom.
LULU: Wait, is that my mom? Is that actually?
MATT: Here, I'll play it again.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, mother's voice: Keebudishawlt.]
LULU: That's my mom.
MATT: It is your mom.
LULU: That's totally my mom. How did you get my mom?
ANNIE: Well, how did it feel to hear your mom? Whatever. Shall we get to ...
MATT: Yeah, let's wait.
LULU: I can't believe you got my mom. Okay, sorry. I'm just still—I'm still—okay, keep going.
MATT: Yeah, we're gonna get back to that. But let's just get to what they found.
ANNIE: Yeah, tell us what you found.
DANIEL ABRAMS: What we found was ...
MATT: That when a kid heard the voice of a stranger, their brain was essentially quiet.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: Not a lot of activity.
ANNIE: But then the moment ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, mother: Keebudishawlt.]
ANNIE: … the kid's mom spoke, all of these regions in the kid's brain ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: That are associated with all kinds of rewards in our life ...
ANNIE: ... would start firing like crazy.
DANIEL ABRAMS: So if you love chocolate, I could show you a picture of chocolate.
ANNIE: And these exact same regions in your brain would start going, "Pew, pew, pew!"
DANIEL ABRAMS: And when you hear music that you love ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Led Zeppelin: "Kashmir"]
MATT: The hammer of the gods thundering in your ears.
ANNIE: [laughs]
MATT: Yes!
DANIEL ABRAMS: This part of the brain becomes active.
ANNIE: Or when you're doing drugs.
LULU: Wait.
MATT: That's right, Lulu. When you're doing hardcore drugs.
ANNIE: Or when you're thinking about sex.
LULU: What?
MATT: Same parts of your brain are lighting up.
DANIEL ABRAMS: It's the sex, drugs and rock and roll part of your brain.
MATT: And mom.
LULU: [laughs]
MATT: Hanging out.
LULU: And she's like, "Hey, guys ..."
ANNIE: "Who's got a spliff?"
LULU: She's just, like, at the concert, like, on the table, like, doing lines.
MATT: Yeah, she's right there with you.
LULU: Wait, what?
MATT: I know.
ANNIE: That is so wild!
DANIEL ABRAMS: But, you know, it makes sense, because voices are rewarding, you know?
ANNIE: Well, why—actually, I'm curious why that's a given.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Well, the way I think about it is that during development, you know, a mother's voice is paired with tender loving care, right? Nourishment, touch, love. All forms of kind of parental care.
MATT: Mother's voice is just Pavlov's bell.
LULU: [laughs] That's what I was thinking.
MATT: Just a ringing bell.
DANIEL ABRAMS: It's kind of a coarse way of thinking about it, but, you know, there's probably far more to it than that, obviously. But if you're looking for a scientific explanation as to how a voice becomes rewarding, this seems like a fairly non-controversial kind of connection there.
LULU: Yeah, I can see that. It's like this—you know, you picture this little baby brain totally lost, all these things whizzing around. It can't tell, like, a butterfly from its own foot. And then there's this disembodied voice that it can, like, grab onto to survive.
MATT: Yeah, it's almost like this little rope you can hang onto.
DANIEL ABRAMS: But wait, I'll take you down a little side route. We thought this study was so cool, we were like—and again, we were totally floored by it.
MATT: So after the study, Daniel and his collaborator ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Put our heads together and decided, "Oh, well let's do the same thing in adolescence."
MATT: Teenagers, 13 to 16.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yeah.
ANNIE: Why did you think that?
DANIEL ABRAMS: Well, we just thought there was gonna be something interesting there.
MATT: So they do the whole study again with these teens.
DANIEL ABRAMS: The exact same thing for each kid. We brought their mom in, we recorded their voice, the mom's voice, and we played it to them while they hear kitty cat meows and other stuff.
MATT: They look at the brains of these teens, and what do they see?
LULU: I don't know.
MATT: In the reward center, stranger's voices.
ANNIE: Pew, pew!
LULU: [gasps]
DANIEL ABRAMS: Exactly.
MATT: Everything flipped.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Unfamiliar voices became more rewarding than mom's voice.
ANNIE: Oh, no! That's so sad!
DANIEL ABRAMS: I know.
NANCY KIELTY: Well, as a mother, I think it validates something I experienced in my life, you know?
MATT: So we did talk to our moms.
MATT: Are you taking notes?
ANNIE: Yeah, she is taking notes.
NANCY KIELTY: Just a little bit.
MATT: What are you doing?
NANCY KIELTY: I'm pretty corporate.
MATT: My mom, Nancy Kielty.
NANCY KIELTY: Yeah, I know. This is nice. I can see Matt.
MATT: Yes.
BETH MCEWEN: You don't need to see me.
ANNIE: And my mom, Beth McEwen.
MATT: To just kind of ask them, "What do you make of this?"
ANNIE: Yeah. How does it make you feel?
BETH MCEWEN: Well, the childhood part, I mean, I can relate. Just love. It's heaven. It's honey and butter. It's awesome, if everything's going right.
NANCY KIELTY: And then you reach a point where anytime you say something you get this negative kind of reaction.
MATT: Right. Everything becomes this big internal eye roll.
BETH MCEWEN: Oh, there's external eye rolls, for sure.
MATT: Right.
BETH MCEWEN: Oh, yeah.
NANCY KIELTY: Yeah, and it's—it's hard, I think, as a parent.
DANIEL ABRAMS: I know. It's a little painful. But, you know, the way we think about it is that, you know, adolescence is this important time of life where you're starting to shift to your friends and peers, and this an important part of development for kind of charting a path in independent life.
MATT: And this was something that both our moms acknowledged.
NANCY KIELTY: It was hard when I saw you pulling away, but it was healthy, right? You know?
BETH MCEWEN: That's what a mother wants. You don't want a clingy kid that's gonna be right beside you forever.
MATT: You want a kid who will turn away from you and go ...
BETH MCEWEN: "Wow, look at that stuff! The world is huge and big and wonderful."
LULU: Yeah. It's like your mom's voice is your whole world when you're a little kid, and then you—it's like your job to turn away from that and start building the world that you will step into with all these other voices somehow. Like, you're—I don't know, the rejection of the mom's voice is the beginning of finding your own.
MATT: Right. Like, I remember being in eighth grade and the quote-unquote "other voices" around me were, like, skater kids, and that's what I was trying to become.
ANNIE: Yeah, and you're trying out—it's funny, when you were trying to be a skater kid, I was probably pretending to be a horse. So I'm not sure what that says.
MATT: [laughs] Nothing good.
ANNIE: Nothing good, guys. Nothing good.
MATT: But yeah, it's the same thing of, like, "Bye, Mom."
ANNIE: But it swings back around to the parent—the mom, eventually, right? Like, when my kid's 40 ...
MATT: No, Annie.
ANNIE: Like, they're gonna just be so happy to hear from me.
DANIEL ABRAMS: That's what I've been told, that they do circle back.
ANNIE: Really?
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yeah. Come on. This is—this is what I've been told.
ANNIE: Did you do that test? Okay, you just did that—you haven't done that test.
MATT: Yeah. It hasn't been confirmed by science. It's just anecdotal.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yeah.
MATT: But Daniel says when they did do that study with the teens ...
DANIEL ABRAMS: Oh yeah—no, no, no.
MATT: ... the results showed that mom's voice, it's still in that pleasure center.
DANIEL ABRAMS: Yes. Mom doesn't get completely kicked out of that part of the brain.
MATT: It's just now that she's a little bit quieter.
LULU: It's interesting because, like, when I heard my mom's voice, when you guys played it, I felt, like, preternaturally comforted.
ANNIE: Hmm.
LULU: But it's like I don't—these days I don't, you know, gab on the phone that much with her about stuff and, you know—but just hearing the voice and the rhythms and, like, the little—like the articulations, like "keebudishaw" in this way that is so her, that's, like, comforting in a way that's kind of like re-encountering, like, a primal lullaby.
[lullaby]
MATT: Okay, when we come back, what the voice gives back to you. Back in a second.
LULU: All right, so I'm Lulu Miller, back with ...
MATT: I'm eating a protein bar.
LULU: ... producers Matt Kielty and ...
ANNIE: I'm eating a banana.
LULU: ... Annie McEwen.
MATT: Two different people, two different worlds.
LULU: … back with our episode on voice.
MATT: Okay, so the final story about what the voice gives you, maybe also kind of like what the voice takes? And Lulu, we're gonna start with you.
LULU: Yeah. I mean, I guess—so this begins with ...
ALICE WONG: A friend of the show.
LULU: ... one of my favorite voices out there. Funny woman, punk, the MacArthur Award-winning activist and writer ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Welcome Alice.]
LULU: ... Alice Wong.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: How are you doing, Alice?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm alive, Jamal. How about you?]
LULU: And years ago we sort of became friends.
LULU: Hi!
LULU: Started a book club of two.
ALICE WONG: I know! Oh my gosh.
LULU: Collaborated on work together.
ALICE WONG: Why don't I go through "Voice" and then give you any notes, and ...
LULU: She performed this essay for us about how she has muscular dystrophy, how she uses a ventilator to breathe.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: Yeah, I want to get to the point ...]
LULU: Which has given her this very distinct voice ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: ... where we don't have to defend our existence.]
LULU: ... which she uses to fight for disability rights, and to shine light on disabled writers and artists, inventors.
ALICE WONG: The world is ours, and this is for all of us.
LULU: Anyway, so that's Alice.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
LULU: And then in the summer of 2022, I saw that she had posted this photo of herself online. She was in a hospital bed with all kinds of tubes and wires coming out of her, and she did not look well. She had a caption about how she was in the ICU. And then she just went dark. And it wasn't until a few months later that I finally heard from her.
LULU: Oh, hi Alice. It is so good to see your face. How are you doing? Like, are you hurting right now?
ALICE WONG: I had some opioids earlier, but fun fact, they cause constipation, so I quit them and take Tylenol only when necessary. I miss the fentanyl I had in the hospital, which was delightful. Utterly delightful. I called fentanyl, "Fenty," and I said he was my boyfriend.
LULU: [laughs]
ALICE WONG: I miss Fenty very much.
LULU: It turned out she had had to have a tracheostomy. Basically, she'd had a lung infection that was so serious, to allow her to breathe, they had to cut straight into her windpipe and insert a tube.
MATT: Right, where it's—you're, like, on a ventilator?
LULU: Yeah, and she's on a ventilator. And, you know, that saved her life. But it took her speaking voice.
ALICE WONG: It's been a lot.
LULU: And obviously, you can totally still hear Alice's voice, it's just now coming through this computer voice.
ALICE WONG: I also have a range of voices that I can select from. And honestly, I hate all of them.
LULU: She played me some of them.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hi. My name is Darius, and I'm the first male African-American English speech synthesis voice from Acapela.]
LULU: There's also ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hello! My name is Ella.]
LULU: ... a tiny child.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hi, I'm Karen.]
LULU: There's Karen, which Alice was, like, "No way!"
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Hi.]
LULU: And then ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm Heather.]
LULU: ... there's Heather.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Efficient, fast and of very high quality. Why not try me out with your own words?]
ALICE WONG: So Heather is just the one I hate least. It is robotic, clinical and white.
LULU: Alice is Chinese American.
ALICE WONG: I just tolerate her and I bet she tolerates me. Ha ha ha. Oh, see what I did there? I typed "ha ha ha" to simulate actual laughter. And while it works to some extent, it feels robotic and hollow to me. I miss laughing, and all the sounds I can make that make people laugh.
LULU: Shit. Can you—you can't guffaw. You can't laugh. Oh, you just made a—a mixed laugh and pain, like "oh" with your mouth. Like, "Ooh." Does it feel different, though, without the sound? Like, does it detract from the experience of savoring the humor?
ALICE WONG: I wish I could laugh, because isn't that also a collective experience? I think that's the heart of it: being able to join with others in sharing an emotion the same way.
LULU: Hmm. Is—is your speaking voice lost forever?
ALICE WONG: There is a device I could attach to my ventilator where it will potentially allow me to speak called the Passy-Muir valve.
LULU: And in a way that's what this story is really about: this tiny piece of plastic with odd existential potential that would come to have a profound and kind of unexpected effect on Alice's life. So flash forward. In early 2025, Alice is ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Hello.]
LULU: ... in a hospital ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: Hi, Dr. Rosen. Happy new year.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Happy new year to you. Good to see you.]
LULU: ... where she lives, in San Francisco ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Things going okay?]
LULU: ... to get this valve.
LULU: Wow, it's big!
LULU: Which she showed me.
LULU: It almost looks like a shampoo cap, bottle cap or something. And then does that go—do you know how it would go in?
ALICE WONG: Yes, that's in my next answer, young one.
LULU: Okay. [laughs]
LULU: Alice explained this valve attaches to a person's trach tube, right where it goes into their neck.
ALICE WONG: And redirects airflow through the vocal cords and nasal passages so a person can speak.
LULU: Oh, that's an elegant design.
LULU: And the cherry on top for Alice was that this valve, this sleekly designed little contraption ...
ALICE WONG: I was excited that he was a disabled inventor.
LULU: ... was invented by a disabled guy.
ALICE WONG: He was a quadriplegic due to Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
LULU: Muscular dystrophy.
ALICE WONG: Like me.
LULU: His name was David Muir—Passy-Muir valve.
ALICE WONG: I felt a kinship with him in that regard.
LULU: So back at the hospital ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Are you ready? Okay.]
LULU: ... a doctor and a nurse took this valve, attached it to a new trach tube ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: All right, Alice, I'm gonna hold your head here.]
LULU: ... pulled her old one out of her neck ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Show me. That looks okay.]
LULU: ... took the new one with the valve ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Coming down.]
LULU: ... pushed that into her neck ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: You're all set to go conquer the world, right?]
LULU: ... then made sure she could breathe. And then had her try to speak.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Try that Passy-Muir. I'm gonna do that.]
LULU: But it doesn't work.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Her vocal cords were moving.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: She's definitely moving.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Just wasn't enough to ...]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: So I guess my muscular dystrophy has made my diaphragm weaker, probably especially these past few years.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Unfortunately.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: I suspect that is ...]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: ... that is the case.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Do you have it?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: That's fine. Let's still try again.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Okay.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Suction.]
LULU: So they try again.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Big inhale.]
LULU: And again, she can't get any sound to come out.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: It just—there's not enough of that push.]
LULU: And so ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: All right.]
LULU: ... she gave it one last big push.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: You ready? Oh wait, let's—[laughs]]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: Once more with feeling.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: Love it! Love it! There we go. With feeling. Okay. Cuff—cuff is down.]
LULU: But again ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: One more big one.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, nurse: Yeah.]
LULU: ... nothing.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Dr. Rosen: How do you—how do you feel?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice Wong: Pooped.]
LULU: So we were able to record that day. This was actually Alice's fifth attempt to use the valve since she went into the ICU in 2022.
MATT: Oh my gosh.
LULU: Yeah. Five different times of trying this thing that promised to give her her voice back and failed to give her her voice back. And she said that over these years she's had this thing with her in her apartment just kind of sitting there on the shelf unused, not working. And over time she grew to resent it. And she said that one day ...
ALICE WONG: I went to their website and did some digging.
LULU: And she found some writings by its inventor, this guy David Muir.
ALICE WONG: Talking about the value of this valve.
LULU: Writing about the power this valve holds, how it can really give people their life back.
ALICE WONG: What it can do, as if it's some miracle solution.
LULU: And that the mission, the whole point of this valve was ...
ALICE WONG: Quote, "Dignity through speech."
LULU: ... dignity through speech.
ALICE WONG: The phrase, "dignity through speech," gave me pause.
LULU: And Alice ended up publishing this open letter addressed to David, who she learned had died back in 1990.
ALICE WONG: David, isn't there dignity in silence, too? Silence does not mean a person is voiceless, as there are millions of non-speaking people who use gestures, sign language, writing, technology and other means to communicate with the world. I live in a world of silence that is not lesser or devoid of richness. My reality is just different.
LULU: And she said going through that process of writing to him, imagining him, also left her with all these questions about him.
ALICE WONG: I'm so curious if he had disabled friends or was connected to community.
LULU: Of how the two of them could be so similar and yet so different.
ALICE WONG: David Muir is a mystery to me.
LULU: There's almost nothing about David out there. He's sort of this forgotten, disabled inventor. And so I told Alice, well maybe we could unravel this mystery. Maybe we could go report it out and figure out who he was, and how he came to these ideas about voice and the concept of dignity. And then ...
ALICE WONG: Lulu, are you close to your delivery date?
LULU: So close.
LULU: I was useless.
ANNIE: Yeah. Thanks a lot. [laughs]
LULU: I went on maternity leave for the full six months, babies.
ANNIE: Beautiful.
LULU: And—and so you guys picked up the torch, the reporting torch.
MATT: Yeah. And it took a while, but eventually ...
MATT: Oh! Are you showing up too?
ANNIE: Hello.
MATT: We got in touch with ...
MATT: Annie, I don't know if you want to kind of either start or say more.
JUNE MUIR: Well, I was there when David was born.
MATT: Oh!
ANNIE: All right, let's start there. [laughs]
MATT: June Muir and Don Muir.
ANNIE: You're David's father?
DON MUIR: Yes.
ANNIE: I presume?
DON MUIR: I am.
MATT: David's parents, who live outside of Phoenix, and seemed actually just, like, really excited to talk to us about David, I think because they don't often get the chance to.
JUNE MUIR: Well, when David was born ...
ANNIE: This was in 1961.
JUNE MUIR: ... the doctors said, "This guy is going to be a football player."
MATT: He had, like, really strong, defined muscles.
DON MUIR: Like somebody that had been doing major calf raises at the gym.
LULU: [laughs] A little jacked baby.
MATT: Yeah, a little jacked baby.
LULU: Okay.
MATT: But in the first year ...
JUNE MUIR: He had some problems that I noticed when he started walking.
ANNIE: So for instance, like most kids ...
JUNE MUIR: You know how they take their little fat feet and they just sort of plop them down?
ANNIE: Yeah.
ANNIE: When David lifted his foot to take a step ...
JUNE MUIR: He would halt.
ANNIE: Hesitate.
JUNE MUIR: Then put it down.
ANNIE: Then one day when June noticed he was playing ...
JUNE MUIR: He couldn't get up off the floor.
ANNIE: So at the age of five, they took David to a doctor who ran some tests, and told them that David ...
JUNE MUIR: Had muscular dystrophy. And the doctor was describing what was going to be happening, and how he was not going to be able to walk, and finally not be able to breathe, and the heart wouldn't work, because they're all muscle. And they probably wouldn't live past 12 years of age. And I'm thinking to myself, "Why are you saying this in front of my child?"
MATT: Did David seem terrified at that moment? Or ...
JUNE MUIR: No, he was just sitting there.
DON MUIR: Very stoically.
ANNIE: And so they go home and try as best as they can to just have a normal life.
JUNE MUIR: He loved cartoons on Saturday morning.
ANNIE: He loved to play with matches.
DON MUIR: And little plastic army guys.
MATT: And at an early age he's using a wheelchair.
JUNE MUIR: A push type. The little stinker ...
ANNIE: Apparently, he got his friends at the playground to push him as fast as they could at this ditch.
JUNE MUIR: And tried to jump it.
MATT: What? [laughs]
DON MUIR: To hit the berm and try to get it over this.
ANNIE: So it would get air?
DON MUIR: Yeah.
JUNE MUIR: So I got a call to come down to the school. So he didn't do that anymore.
MATT: Instead, what he did is he got his friends to push him down the hallway at school.
JUNE MUIR: And they were mowing down all of the kids in the hallway.
LULU: [laughs]
JUNE MUIR: So I got another call from the principal.
LULU: Okay, okay. So he's got, like, rambunctious troublemaker—like, fun vibes.
ANNIE: Yeah, totally. But I think, like, the thing that June and Don said, like, stood out most about David was ...
DON MUIR: He was an unstoppable communicator.
JUNE MUIR: David was a talker.
DON MUIR: A motor mouth.
MATT: From the age of six, seven, eight, nine ...
JUNE MUIR: We talked about everything.
MATT: Ten, eleven, twelve.
JUNE MUIR: The last year he had.
MATT: But then thirteen, fourteen ...
JUNE MUIR: If he heard something on television that morning, he would pick a side and I'd pick a side.
MATT: Fifteen.
JUNE MUIR: And then we would just debate back and forth.
MATT: Sixteen, seventeen.
DON MUIR: He's in high school.
MATT: His voice is dropping.
DON MUIR: Didn't get as deep as mine, but ...
MATT: Eighteen.
DON MUIR: He's a 12th grader.
MATT: He actually switches high schools, and this new one doesn't have a ramp. And in this way that totally reminds me of Alice, he tells the administrators ...
DON MUIR: "There is this law that you're supposed to provide me access."
MATT: "You guys have to build me a ramp."
JUNE MUIR: "Or I will sue you."
DON MUIR: "Or I will sue you." [laughs]
JUNE MUIR: That week he had a ramp.
DON MUIR: There was a ramp.
ANNIE: No way!
DON MUIR: Yeah.
ANNIE: By nineteen, he's in an electric wheelchair, and a lot of his muscles ...
JUNE MUIR: Were just slowly shutting down.
ANNIE: By 20, 21 ...
DON MUIR: His diaphragm's not working enough.
ANNIE: ... he's having trouble breathing.
JUNE MUIR: That's when all of his fears came out.
MATT: It'd usually be at night in bed.
JUNE MUIR: When he started talking about dying, and the things that he had noticed that he wasn't able to do any longer.
MATT: And June ...
JUNE MUIR: We would talk all night.
MATT: ... would sit next to him in bed.
JUNE MUIR: Trying to calm his fears.
MATT: The next morning he'd be up, cheerful, talking.
JUNE MUIR: But night times were bad for him.
MATT: And then he turns 22, 23, 24, 25 ...
ANNIE: And one morning when June was on her way out of the house, she went into David's room to check on him.
JUNE MUIR: And he said, "I'm having a dream. The good guys are fighting the bad guys. Should I go back to sleep and see who wins?" And I said, "Sure."
ANNIE: So she grabs her keys, gets to the front door.
JUNE MUIR: And I think something's wrong.
ANNIE: She goes back to David's room.
JUNE MUIR: And David was blue.
ANNIE: And ...
JUNE MUIR: I didn't know what to do.
ANNIE: ... she just freezes.
JUNE MUIR: He needs oxygen. Then I remember the alarm.
ANNIE: They had an alarm installed that went directly to the fire department.
JUNE MUIR: Pushed the alarm. And the firemen come, they give him oxygen, put him on a gurney and take him out to the hospital. And when we're at the hospital, that's when they put the trach in.
ANNIE: The doctors performed a tracheostomy on David.
DON MUIR: So he could breathe.
MATT: In the hospital, the best doctors could provide David with the ability to speak was ...
JUNE MUIR: With these communication boards.
MATT: If you can imagine, like, a Ouija board. It's this board with letters and numbers. And basically, somebody like June would have to sit with David and watch his eyes go from letter to letter.
JUNE MUIR: To spell out the words.
ANNIE: So if you ask David ...
JUNE MUIR: "What do you want to watch?"
ANNIE: "... on TV?" June would sit there and watch as his eyes would go to the B, the A, the S, the E.
JUNE MUIR: Base ...
ANNIE: B-A-L-L.
JUNE MUIR: ... ball.
MATT: Baseball.
JUNE MUIR: It took forever.
DON MUIR: It was not a good deal.
MATT: I mean, for somebody like David ...
DON MUIR: A motor mouth. When you took that away ...
MATT: ... it was like his whole world fell apart.
JUNE MUIR: He was asking me, "If I can't live with this trach, if it's just one step too far for me, will you help me die? I've got to be able to talk."
ANNIE: And then one afternoon he's sitting at the table with his mom and dad. And he starts to spell out and mouth the words of this idea.
DON MUIR: He says, "My ventilator has this little valve."
ANNIE: It's a valve that's connected to the machine that lets air come in, into David's lungs. But then ...
DON MUIR: It closes.
ANNIE: So that David's breath, the moisture in his breath, doesn't go back down into the machine and, you know, potentially damage it.
DON MUIR: Right.
ANNIE: It's like a door that swings shut behind you?
DON MUIR: Yeah.
JUNE MUIR: Yes.
MATT: And so David was basically like ...
DON MUIR: Can we do something like that?
MATT: "Can we take this valve that's on my ventilator, modify it and put it right where the trach tube goes into my neck so it still lets air in, but then ..."
DON MUIR: "... it closes ..."
MATT: "... trapping the air inside my body ...
DON MUIR: "... forcing the air to take its normal path up through the neck."
MATT: Up through the vocal cords ...
DON MUIR: "... and out."
MATT: Meaning, hopefully, possibly ...
JUNE MUIR: He would be able to talk.
MATT: So ...
JUNE MUIR: He tells his father, "Okay, I need you to do this for me."
MATT: "Go to the ventilator."
JUNE MUIR: "Get that valve."
MATT: "Tweak this."
JUNE MUIR: "Cut that."
MATT: "Attach it here."
JUNE MUIR: I'm going, "Oh, he wants us to kill him." [laughs]
MATT: Don, how did you feel about it?
DON MUIR: Well, this is an interesting project to me.
MATT: So Don goes and grabs an X-ACTO knife, some duct tape, walks over to David and disconnects the tube from his neck.
ANNIE: So at this point, David could barely breathe.
MATT: And then he grabbed that little valve from the ventilator.
DON MUIR: Just pulled it off.
MATT: Cut it.
DON MUIR: Shaped it, and literally taped it onto the end of the tube.
MATT: Put the tube with this modified valve back into David's neck and waited.
DON MUIR: And lo and behold ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Today, April 22, 1989, we're visiting with ...]
DON MUIR: ... it worked.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: ... David Muir, the inventor of the Passy-Muir tracheostomy speaking valve. How are you doing, David?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, David Muir: Good, how are you?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Just fine, thanks. I have a few questions for you. Why did you invent the valve?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, David Muir: Out of pure frustration. I had a respiratory arrest, and after that I wasn't able to speak. All the air just escaped, and—very frustrating. So I decided that if I could just keep the air in, send it to my vocal cords, then I'd be able to speak.]
LULU: Wow! It's, like, a little bit soft, but super—like, it just feels like it has all the complexity of a voice.
MATT: Yeah. Like, you can hear a real personality there.
LULU: I wonder if he could laugh.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: You want to take a look at that?]
MATT: Well, so there's this moment where they hand him this book that has a picture of his valve in it.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, David Muir: Oh, yeah. [laughs]]
LULU: Oh yeah, he just did. Okay. He just chuckled at the book.
MATT: Yeah, this little chuckle.
LULU: Huh. I mean, it's like the thing—it's like using duct tape to build this ladder out of a deep well.
ANNIE: Like, as in releasing himself from himself once again.
LULU: Yeah. With duct tape.
ANNIE: Right.
LULU: Damn! So this is David Muir. So what did the—what happens? I mean, I guess we know this valve becomes big enough to make it to Alice's hands.
MATT: Yeah, so what happens is not long after they made the valve ...
DON MUIR: We ran into Dr. Passy.
MATT: This doctor in California.
DON MUIR: An ENT doctor.
MATT: Ear, nose and throat?
DON MUIR: Right.
ANNIE: And he's like, "I can help a bunch of people with this right now." And so they patent the valve and they form this company.
MATT: And David ...
DON MUIR: Initially he was one of the order-takers.
MATT: Don had set him up in his room with a computer.
DON MUIR: Where you could talk into the computer and it would write.
MATT: And he would process orders for this valve he'd created.
DON MUIR: And it just evolved from there.
MATT: And over the years, this valve would be given to patients ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Want to sing a song?]
MATT: ... young and old.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Yes!]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Let's do, "The wheels on the bus go ...]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Round, round, round.]
MATT: There were even cases of infants who couldn't make a noise ...
DON MUIR: Because of the trach that they had.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: You want to talk to mama?]
MATT: So parents would have this valve attached to their trach.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Talk to mama.]
DON MUIR: And ...
[Baby babbling.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Yeah?]
DON MUIR: ... they could hear their baby cry for the first time.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Agnes, what was it like to not have your voice when you were on the ventilator, without your valve?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Horrible.]
MATT: And there's all these testimonials online ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: The worst feeling ever.]
MATT: ... of these different people with trachs ...
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Just laying in the bed, and not able to speak.]
MATT: ... who got their voice back from this valve.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: Thank whoever invented this.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: It's just so much better.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: It's made a lot of very unhappy people be able to live again.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm so grateful.]
JUNE MUIR: It was like a switch had flipped.
MATT: And suddenly David ...
JUNE MUIR: He was just happy. He said, "I thought I was just doing it for me, but there were all these other people out there waiting to have that." He says, "I know why I'm here."
MATT: One of the things about this story for us—and I know you guys aren't a part of the company at all, but we were working this—with this writer, Alice Wong, who lost her speaking voice and had a tracheostomy. And she saw on the website, when she learned about the valve, that there was this—the word "dignity" was used, about this valve giving people dignity through speech. And that word really bothered her. And so I kind of was just curious how you guys think of the word "dignity," and how David maybe thought of the word "dignity."
JUNE MUIR: You know, if you can't communicate with people, you disappear. And you—you do lose yourself, because—well, just like you're doing with the interview and the talking, you're expressing yourself, you're putting your opinions, you're being heard, you're making a statement in life. If you don't have that, it's much more difficult on you. And I think that's where the dignity comes in. It's the—I want people to know I'm here. And ...
ANNIE: How did David—I'm sorry.
JUNE MUIR: Go ahead.
ANNIE: I'm just curious. Like, what happened next? I mean ...
MATT: Yeah, because you said that David died at 28?
JUNE MUIR: Yes.
DON MUIR: Mm-hmm.
MATT: And he made the valve at 25. And so I'm just wondering, like, how did he die? Was it just ultimately his muscles failed?
DON MUIR: Well ...
JUNE MUIR: No. So ...
ANNIE: June said it was August 30, 1990.
JUNE MUIR: ... I went in and I got David up, got him dressed, combed his hair, brushed his teeth.
ANNIE: And she reminded him that he had promised to go pick his nephew up from the bus stop that day.
JUNE MUIR: On the first day of school.
ANNIE: So David, in his wheelchair, left the house, made his way to the bus stop. And after a little while his nephew came to the front door.
JUNE MUIR: Crying. And he said, "David didn't come and get me." My stomach was falling.
ANNIE: June runs outside.
JUNE MUIR: To the middle of the street. And I looked down the street, and I see him down at the end of the block.
ANNIE: His wheelchair is on its side on the sidewalk.
JUNE MUIR: And I'm running as fast as I can. And I hear the ventilator, which means he is disconnected from the ventilator.
ANNIE: Which means he had no air, no way of calling out for help.
JUNE MUIR: And ...
ANNIE: June rushed over to him.
JUNE MUIR: … I said, "Cowboy, what's wrong?" And I put the ventilator hose back on and connected it.
ANNIE: She had a neighbor call 911. The EMTs showed up, took David to the hospital.
JUNE MUIR: There at the hospital, and the doctor came out and told me he didn't think David was going to make it. Don was working in California at the time. I called him, told him what the doctor said, hung up the phone, and went back to stay by David's bed. And all I could do was say, "I'm sorry," because he was alone when he died. He just didn't want to be alone when he died. And yet that's what happened. He was alone when he died.
ALICE WONG: The way David died is one of my biggest nightmares.
LULU: So we played all that to Alice.
ANNIE: Oh, wow.
ALICE WONG: Falling and having your ventilator disconnected or malfunction while in public.
LULU: She said, like David, she has alarm systems in place, and she even pays a speaking person to be with her at all times who could call out for help.
ALICE WONG: But these systems will never replace the ability to scream for help. And the loss is real, and it's terrifying.
LULU: Hmm.
ALICE WONG: I was a pretty sassy young person, so I laughed when I heard David's threat to sue his school. Maybe that's one aspect of being disabled in a non-disabled world.
LULU: The aspect being what, exactly?
ALICE WONG: I guess we have to be tenacious and pretty daring in order to get the bare minimum, which in many ways drives us in our ambitions. He created something out of a personal need that helped many disabled people, which is so rad.
LULU: Does learning about him as a person change your feelings or some of your frustration with that phrase, "dignity through speech?"
ALICE WONG: My stance hasn't changed after David's mom reflected on that phrase. Yes, David and I both lost our voices, and he was able to gain it back thanks to the invention of his valve. But let's say he wasn't able to speak again. He would still have dignity despite mourning the loss of something so close to his identity. I miss my voice every day, and am frustrated by how I communicate and the way I sound on the radio right now. But I still have dignity.
LULU: And in true Alice fashion, she has since joined this organization for folks who are non-speaking. It's called Communication First. And she's become a part of their advisory council—just, you know ...
MATT: Sort of, like, advocating.
LULU: Advocating for folks who don't have a speaking voice.
MATT: Right.
LULU: And—and shining light on all the ways people can communicate.
MATT: Right.
LULU: And yet ...
LULU: Okay, you've shown the bat signal on the moon two days ago. Do you want to tell us why we are here?
LULU: ... it turned out, despite all her beef with the speaking voice, or her belief that most of us overvalue it, all that while she had been feeding recordings of her old speaking voice into this AI model to try to recover hers.
ALICE WONG: This is an impossible wish, but my hope is that any sort of generated voice from my past can capture my humor and personality. This may be too much to ask from something artificial, but at the very least maybe when talking to friends who knew me in the before times, they will feel like it's the same me.
LULU: And so one day she messaged Annie and I and was like, "It just made me a voice based on my voice." Do you guys—I haven't listened to it yet. Should we try it out together on tape?
ANNIE: Yes.
ALICE WONG: Let's give it a whirl.
LULU: How do we—how should we do this?
ALICE WONG: Okay. I am going to type a sentence and play it.
LULU: And ...
ALICE WONG: Hello Lulu and Annie. This is the voice created by AI.
LULU: Oh my God!
LULU: It was eerie, right?
ANNIE: Yeah.
LULU: That's not not you.
ANNIE: And, like, the part I remember the most is that it included her breathing machine. Like, it included the very unique voice that she had.
LULU: Yes.
LULU: What do you—okay, what do you think?
ALICE WONG: I agree. It's like a reclamation of my old self, and the old self that was always a part of me that didn't get a chance to come out. Of course, I can't go back, but this is a tool that might be helpful, adjusting to this new way of existing. I wonder if a good analogy is with cosmetic surgery. This is something I don't really need to live, but it makes me feel a bit better about myself.
LULU: But here's the thing.
LULU: Alice!
LULU: A few months later, when we check in again ...
LULU: How are things over there?
ALICE WONG: Good to see you.
LULU: ... she's not using it. She doesn't want to use it, in part, she said, because the more she thought about it, she realized that ...
ALICE WONG: It's no longer who I am.
LULU: That is a question I've had throughout all of this, though. Like, is you inside necessarily any different, just because the mode of getting you to the outside has changed?
ANNIE: I think the inner me has changed because I still cannot be my full self. And by "full self" I mean my old self. And this is a conflict that I struggle with. I lost a way to express my personality, humor. I lost the kind of wit that comes from my ability to quickly respond or interject something vital during a chat. I lost my ability to debate and smack someone down with an argument who deserves it. I lost that sense of freedom, looseness and messiness. I am still me to some extent from the before times, but I miss the old me. I am changing. We all are changing, and I hope I am becoming fuller and a truer reflection of the inner me. But that's a work in progress.
LULU: Hmm. I'm wondering, what are you noticing that's changing, or becoming this truer version of you?
ALICE WONG: As I say less with my text-to-speech app, I am more into my thoughts. Perhaps I am more precise and concise on what I want to say. For me, everything I process is more vital, urgent and serious. If only you knew what's really going on inside of me—ha ha. It's also a more perceptible, gentle world.
LULU: Perceptible. Perceptible, meaning, like—can you help me understand what you mean by perceptible?
ALICE WONG: I am sensing and seeing and feeling more now that I am in the solitude of this silent world. I am taking in a lot, and perhaps because I am not communicating fully, I am absorbing things more than before.
LULU: Like, for instance, Alice explained this moment with a friend of hers named Lateef, who also uses a computer-assisted voice. They were at this party together.
ALICE WONG: I am a party animal and we do meet up at events or parties.
LULU: And she said they were sitting at the dinner table amidst all the people talking. She was watching as Lateef's attendant helped him eat.
ALICE WONG: A luscious piece of sea bass. He was eating, and we were looking at each other in this moment of pleasure and understanding, amidst the din of chattering, speaking people. We had a conversation that was complete in itself.
ANNIE: Yeah, I guess—yeah, it just makes me think—like, sometimes—I don't know, sometimes the voice is this wall. Like, it's—it's—it can get in the way of two people and their connection. And yeah, I don't know. It's not—it's not all gain.
LULU: Alice Wong. Her most recent book is called Disability Intimacy. Her memoir is called Year of the Tiger, and her website is DisabilityVisibilityProject.com you can head there to learn more about everything she is noticing and perceiving.
LULU: This episode was produced by Matt Kielty and Annie McEwen. It was also reported by them and sound designed by them both with additional sound design by Jeremy Bloom. Original music by Matt Kielty and Jeremy Bloom. Mixing help from Jeremy Bloom. It was edited by Alex Neason. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. And big thanks to Wren Farrell who recorded our conversations with Alice over many years. Thank you. Thank you, Wren. And also to Roomful of Teeth, the very talented musicians and vocalists who you hear a lot of throughout the episode. A special shout out to Amanda Crider for helping us get our hands on this music composed by Caroline Shaw, Judd Greenstein, Leilihua Lanzilotti, Rebekka Karijord and Michael Harrison. And then a special special thanks to Hector Espinal and his parents, Crisaly and Hector Espinal. Hector was our young child in the museum. Wonderful acting.
LULU: And finally, special thanks to you, our listeners, for supporting us. It has been a deeply unsettling summer for Radiolab and public radio across the country. As you are likely aware, Congress voted to eliminate all federal funding for public media in America for the first time in history. And for Radiolab and New York Public Radio, which produces this show, we cannot count on this funding to come back in the future. But while we may be defunded, we will not be defeated. And this is where you maybe, just maybe, come in. The best way that you can support Radiolab is to become a Lab member. This is our membership program. For as little as $7 a month, a fancy coffee a month, you can become a Lab member. And as a thanks, you get all kinds of perks and extras like ad-free listening, bonus content, and as of right now, an extra big tote bag.
MATT: [gasps]
LULU: Our newest producer, Anisa designed it. She drew it. She's a genius. She's very multi talented. She could do radio, multimedia, and we didn't know it, but also drawing. And she designed it and ...
ANNIE: Wow, it's so pretty!
LULU: Isn't it gorgeous?
ANNIE: Oh, it's much more mature.
LULU: Describe what you see.
ANNIE: Ooh, I see ...
LULU: What's the theme? What theme are you detecting?
ANNIE: The age of fishes.
MATT: Well, I guess not. Yeah, they're not all fish. There's a seashell.
LULU: There's some—there's a starfish, or a sea star as they're called. There's a squid. So—okay, so we looked back. The reason is not just because it would make a great beach bag, but we looked back and we realized we had, like, a secretly incredibly aquatic year.
ANNIE: Hmm.
LULU: So each creature represents a story. Can you pick any out?
ANNIE: Where the fart is the shark? That's what I was thinking.
LULU: Oh, there is a shark. No, there's a shark.
ANNIE: Where?
LULU: Wait, that thing in the bottom left is the scientists' best guess at what an ancient shark might have looked like, like the one from "The Shark Inside You," that, like, inspired all of our immune systems.
MATT: Oh!
LULU: That's it. So the one bottom left is an ancient shark. Can you guess any other ones?
ANNIE: Pufferfish? Eel?
MATT: No, no. That's not an eel. That's not an eel. It's a lungfish.
ANNIE: Oh, right, right, right.
MATT: Is that a squid or is that Annie's octopus from the octomom?
ANNIE: That's a squid.
MATT: When did we do a squid story?
LULU: That is a baby octopus.
ANNIE: That is?
LULU: Which is an Octomom reference for you, Annie.
MATT: Why is there a seashell?
LULU: Don't ask about that, please.
ANNIE: What about the top left? He's like, "La, la, la, la."
LULU: The top—oh, the top left. Not to brag. That's my guy. That is the singing fish, the toad—the ugliest fish in the sea that sings out to attract a mate. And we put him in our "Screaming Into the Void" episode. I did a little essay about him. But yeah, there are all kinds of references to other stories. It's kind of like a secret code all rendered in this beautiful blue. And it is big. It is a big tote.
ANNIE: I wonder if it could fit a toddler.
LULU: Oh, I think it could, but would not recommend.
ANNIE: Pack one in there.
LULU: I think—oh, for sure. Maybe, like, in the way that, like, a doggy bag, like, the toddler could put his little head out.
ANNIE: Yes.
LULU: Yeah, I think so.
ANNIE: Yeah. And they get—get a little coffee.
LULU: Yeah. But please, if you would like this jumbo tote, if you would like to support our voices, go and sign up to become a Lab member. It would mean so much to us. Just head on over to Radiolab.org/join. Radiolab.org/join. See if it's for you. That was our show. Thank you so much. See you next week with more stuff that hopefully makes you think more deeply about this world and the sounds within it and the sounds that come out of you. Anyway, bye. Thanks.
[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Jonathan and I'm from El Monte, California. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster and Jessica Yung. With help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol-Mazini and Natalie Middleton.]
[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Monica and I'm calling from Mexico City. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]
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